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red lines and red threads—everything wraps around me. i search for the ends, but the ends disappear into the water. and the water of the gorkhon is clayey, turbid, poisonous. it smells of marsh, smells of mist. i look into this water, trying to find at least something, but even my reflection is distorted by ripples. ash dusts my head.
i speak to you in an unknown tongue, and this is much easier.
oynon, amrag nukher, minii akhai.
you always laugh at me and bare your teeth. and at once I think—i never truly hated you. i think, how silly your cloak is, how absurd this snakeskin looks. how funny your eyebrows are—shaggy. how tiny your face is, traced with small wrinkles. i want to take it in my own rough, enormous palms—steppe-bred palms. I want to kiss you.
your lips, oynon, are completely bloodless, nearly blue. thin. trembling. when you are afraid, they betray you first—they press together and turn white. will it hurt you if I press my own lips—thick and chapped—against yours, almost incorporeal? i want to kiss you until they fill with blood.
amrag nukher, the lines have long since bound your tremulous-throbbing throat. do you feel them rubbing against your thin skin? they cut so deeply into your neck, i wonder that you can still breathe.
you say you are no pawn, but a player. but do you not feel the prickle of the straw that stuffs your belly? if you are afraid to feel it inside yourself, place your hand upon my chest—it is bursting at the seams, the stuffing already pushing through. my newly obtained son always says he feels as though he is being tugged by strings. how amusing that my little simpleton is far cleverer than you, minii akhai.
i gave you the bull's blood and collapsed from exhaustion. i sleep in the bed of the woman who loves you, and through my dream I feel your tender lashes against my cheek. you kiss me—your lips are cold. you stroke my face—your hands are warm. you cling to me like a beaten cat, your pride so immense that you hope I feel nothing. i will pretend, my dear. I will even secretly wipe away the bull's blood you've accidentally smeared on me—against the pillow. against the pillow of the woman who loves you.